Semiconductor component manufacturers are constantly striving to increase the performance of their products while decreasing their cost of manufacture. A cost intensive area in the manufacture of semiconductor components is packaging the semiconductor chips that contain the semiconductor devices. As those skilled in the art are aware, discrete semiconductor devices and integrated circuits are fabricated from semiconductor wafers, which are then singulated or diced to produce semiconductor chips. Typically, one or more semiconductor chips is attached to a support substrate such as a metal leadframe using a solder die attach material and encapsulated within a mold compound to provide protection from environmental and physical stresses.
A drawback with attaching a semiconductor chip to a support substrate using a solder die attach material is that the solder typically contains lead which may cause environmental issues. Another drawback is that the amount of heat used to cause solder containing lead to flow is sufficiently high to thermally stress the semiconductor component.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a bonded structure and a method for bonding elements that reduces the use of lead and lowers the thermal budget. It would be advantageous for the bonded structure and bonding method to be cost and time efficient to implement.